


Amazing Flying Space Boy

by alicat54c



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Haly's Circus, M/M, The Flying Graysons - Freeform, but it's the Graysons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22917934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicat54c/pseuds/alicat54c
Summary: Cal couldn't catch his brother and his wife when they fell that night in Gotham, too busy trying to track down the suspicious orange goggled figures stalking his nephew Dick.Bruce is busy trying to juggle fatherhood, and uncovering the mysterious meta flying around his city.Dick is out for revenge.... orThe one where a space ship nearly crashes into the bigtop of Haley's Circus, and Dick Grayson has an uncle.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	Amazing Flying Space Boy

...

Bruce smoothed a crease along his cufflinks, posture painfully straight, as the social worker behind the desk shifted through paperwork.

“While we appreciate your opening your home to a child in need, Mr. Wayne, you must understand that this will most likely be a temporary measure.”

Bruce folded his hands in his lap. “Yes, I understand that you’re still searching for Richard’s relatives?”

The social worker nodded. “His uncle has been found, but, unfortunately, he is having trouble getting custody.”

Bruce’s gaze sharpened. “Why? Does he have some criminal history?”

“Oh, nothing like that!” The woman leaned closer. “I’m not supposed to be telling you this, but the courts won’t give him custody until he can get his paperwork in order, and there’s been some questions about his citizenship. Richard has Hungarian and American citizenship, being born in California, so he has no trouble staying here. However his uncle can’t produce a birth certificate proving he was also born in the states, it happens all the time with home births, and with that circus moving around so much I doubt they kept good records.”

Bruce forces his hand to relax from a fist. “That sounds difficult.”

The social worker nodded, eyes alight with flirtatious gossip. “We can’t grant custody of a child to someone who’s visa might expire any minute. It’s a damn shame.” She flipped open a folder. “But if he does manage to sort out his legal troubles, Richard will be going with his uncle. Officially, Richard will be your ward.”

“I just want to make sure he has the support he needs,” Bruce said, making a note to find a lawyer for the boy’s uncle. Losing your parents was one thing, but to be taken away from your only living family member due to bureaucracy was crushing. 

He remembered the frightening six months after his parent’s death, where an unsteady line of social workers and legally approved care givers traipsed through his home. Alfred only won custody from the state, through a combination of Bruce’s parent’s will, and what Bruce now suspected was some mildly illegal back room meetings with Alfred’s old associates from his ‘theater troupe’. 

Giving a child some stability, when Bruce had so much personal experience, seemed only the right thing to do.

“Everything seems to be in order,” the social worker said, stacking her files together, and straightening them with a rattling tap against the table. “Richard’s in the visiting room, we’ll go over, and I’ll introduce you.”

Bruce did not mention that he had already met Dick, that night at the circus. Had held the boy’s shoulders as the police scurried around the circus tent, until a frantic man in a leotard pushed his way through the crowd to the boy’s side.

The social worker led him down a white painted plasterboard hallway, to a flimsy door near the front of the building. Through the window glass on the door, Bruce could see the same man from before. He had the same dark hair as Dick, and though both their eyes were blue, the older man’s seemed to shine clearer than the sky behind his bulky glasses, unlike Dick’s more dusty grey blue. 

They sat together on the couch, the older man, Dick’s uncle, had one arm curled protectively around the tiny boy clutching at his side.

“I wanna go with you, unchi Cal.” Bruce could barely hear the words, but the walls were thin, and Dick’s tone high and plaintive. 

“Hey, mic robin, it’s going to be all right.” Dick’s uncle’s voice was lighter than Bruce thought it would be, for how big the man was, despite how it cracked with emotion.

Bruce and the social worker exchanged a look of mutual understanding, both taking a few extra moments outside the door, before entering.

The door clicked open. On the dusty cough, Dick extricated himself from his uncle’s hug, lips pressed tight as he glared through his tears.

“Richard,” the social worker said. “This is Bruce Wayne. He’ll be looking out for you for a while.”

Dick popped to his feet, shoulders scrunched high, fists at his sides. “No! I want to stay with unchi Cal!”

Cal shot the adults an apologetic look, before kneeling on the floor, hands set on the boy’s shoulders. “Dick, we talked about this.”

“No!” Blue eyes swam, as the ten year old threw himself into his uncle’s arms.

“It won’t be forever.” Cal pet the back of his head soothingly, and Bruce looked away. “If you need me for anything, anything mic robin, just call me and I’ll be there in a second, ok?”

Dick sniffed into Cal’s shoulder, but nodded, and pulled away, rubbing at his eyes.

Cal stood up, and extended a hand to Bruce. “I’m Callahan Grayson, Dick’s uncle. Thank you for looking after him, Mr. Wayne.”

“Please, call me Bruce,” Bruce said. Cal’s hand radiated heat, and was much too smooth and un-callosed for someone who claimed to work for a living. His grip was stiff, as though he had to consciously think about each muscle in his hand, compared to that which he was holding. Bruce hadn’t seen Cal perform that night at the circus, though he guessed him to be the missing strongman. Why had he been absent that night?

“I’m sorry to hear about your legal trouble,” Bruce continued.

“Oh, right, that.” Cal pushed his glasses further up his nose, gaze elsewhere. 

“If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.” Bruce produced a business card from his pocket.

Cal’s gaze refocused on him as he took the card. “Thanks Mr. Wayne, I really appreciate that.” His gaze turns far away again, and the corners of his mouth flatten. He looks at the social worker. “Hello Mrs. Kay, is there anything else you need from me? I have some things I need to take care of.”

“There’s nothing more we can do for your case right now, Mr. Grayson.”

Cal nodded, expecting that answer. He knelt back down to Dick for a final hug. “I’ll visit you as soon as I can, ok?”

Dick nodded, face pressed into his uncle’s neck.

With a final nod to the adults, Cal left.

Bruce fiddled with his sleeve, before taking a knee. 

Watery eyes met his own, and the boy sniffed wetly. 

A blob of panic constricted around Bruce’s heart. Him, taking care of a child? He had clearly not thought this through.

Taking a breath to calm his nerves, Bruce smiled, trying to project every warm memory of Alfred’s cookies and his father’s hugs that he could.

“Hi Dick, I’m Bruce.”  
…

Cal clenched his fists, because if he tried to clench around the metal railing, it would warp under his fingers.

Those things with the orange goggles and clawed costumes had been lurking around the social services building, but had vanished into the sewers when Cal made his way outside. Gotham was old, and the sewers were surrounded by lead paint and piping. He couldn’t see through it.

With a growling huff, Cal unlocked his fists, and took a breath. He needed to think. He needed a plan. He needed…

“Stop it.” He pressed the heel of his hands to his face, as if he could press the moisture back into his ear ducts. “Stop it. I can’t do this right now. I need to be strong. Dick needs me to be strong!”

The worst night of Cal’s life hadn’t started out that way.

Haley’s Circus was not inexperienced with needing to bribe local unofficial and official enforcement. They had paid the usual Gotham mobs. They should not have been in any danger.

But the night before the show, when John and Mary Grayson had been preparing for their act, Cal had seen a figure with claws and orange eyes stalking the bigtop. Its gaze had fixed on the youngest Grayson. 

Cal had been worried. It was Gotham, a place known for its crazies and potential child abductors, so he begged a night off from his strongman routine to investigate.

Haley was used to Cal running off for various reasons, like the time a fire broke out in a Paris apartment building, or a flood broke a damn in Hong Kong. Cal knew he would have been fired from any normal job for his spotty attendance, but the Graysons had been with Haley’s Circus for years, and Cal more than made up for any lost money through heavy lifting. Literally. He had been able to lift the main pole of the tent by himself since he was twelve.

So, Cal had followed the orange eyed figure into the sewers of Gotham. He had thought vaguely of catching the potential abductor and turning it into the police.

By the time he heard the screams and smashed his way free of the underground, it was already too late. He was too late. He wasn’t there to catch them.

Oh, god, John, Mary…

“Keep it together Cal!” He rubbed at his eyes with enough force to pulverize concrete. Focus. He needed to find the orange goggled figure, and find out why it was still following Dick. It must have had something to do with his brother...with the trapeze breaking. He just couldn’t see how, yet.

But he would find out.  
...

Batman glared at the incident report of a caved in street in downtown Gotham on the cave’s computer screen. Officials had ruled it to be a burst water pipe, but while there were many leaking pipes flooding the street, closer inspection showed them to look broken by an external, rather than an internal force. He would have to examine the site in person to be sure. 

Something bursting from the sewers moments after the Grayson’s fell. The incidents didn’t seem connected, but Bruce had learned to trust his intuition. Everything would connect up neatly once he had all the pieces.

He swapped files to a police report of testimonies concerning threats to the circus by one Anthony Zucco. Small time mobster, former lackey of Black Mask, a man with no business trying to pull protection money on someone else’s territory. He must have been desperate for cash, as Black Mask didn’t take kindly to someone moving into his protection racket. Or maybe Zucco had another motivation.

The next file showed analysis of the chemicals poured onto the trapeze ropes. The combination of phenols and alkalis wasn’t fast acting. The perpetrator must have soaked the nylon ropes hours before, for them to have become so brittle. Perhaps they had been soaked even as Zucco made his threats.

Batman exhaled sharply, and pushed back from the computer. He was talking himself into circles. He needed more information. He needed to find Zucco.

He tapped the com on his ear. “Alfred?”

A crackle as the butler picked up. “Heading out tonight, are we sir?”

Bruce ignored the accusatory tone. “I’ll be back in time for breakfast.”

“Be sure that you do sir. Young Master Richard needs stability in his caretakers right now. I had hoped that you would be cutting down on your more, hm, raucous nightly activities in order to give that to him.”

“He deserves closure about what happened to his parents. I can give that to him.”

A barely audible sigh. “As you say, sir. Do try to come home in one piece, I don’t want to have to explain such injuries to a child.”

“I’ll try,” Bruce said, heading over to the vanta-black stealth vehicle he used in costume.

“See that you do, sir.”

Little did the bat or the butler know, Dick had long since left his bed in the guest wing on the manor.  
...

When Dick was just born, his father had slapped his uncle on the back, and asked if he still had his old space pod, the one they used to use in their act when Cal had been a baby. Cal had muttered something, and returned the next day with a sturdy metal ship, still covered in chunks of melting arctic ice.

John Grayson had been upset that all his childish paper mache additions to make the ship look more impressive had flaked from it’s stainless exterior over time. Cal had sheepishly offered to let him decorate it again. John’s face had lit up, and he immediately scampered away to find the most garish colors of paint in the circus. Mary Grayson had rolled her eyes, baby clutched to her breast.

The Incredible Babe from Space made a comeback for the first six years of Dick’s life, until he became too big for the pod. Cal had smiled when John insisted on using the same poster design from when they were children. Dick still had a copy, tucked next to his poster of Haley’s Circus.

With the Space Babe Dick snuggly in the pod, Mary and John swung out a ballet in the air, of a pair of starcrossed lovers, sending their child to safety after an intergalactic war. Cal filled John’s old role as cradle minder, making sure the ropes and pulleys on the ship looked real enough to disguise the fact that it could float.

Dick had once asked whether the story was true, if that was how all babies came to earth, and whether Dick would get superpowers too.

Unchi Cal had laughed, kissed Dick’s forehead, and explained, no, that’s not where babies came from.

“Good,” Dick remembers saying. “Because Tata says your flying technique is really bad, because you can fly for real, and I want to be the best flier, so I don’t want to cheat like you do!”

Unchi Cal had laughed until he cried. So had his mother and father, when they heard what he said.

Dick wiped his eyes, mind refocusing on the present. He missed his parents. He missed his unchi.

After...it happened, when unchi Cal ran across the big top to sweep him into his arms, Dick thought everything was going to be ok. He thought he would wake up from this nightmare, with unchi Cal holding him close to shush his sobs. Only the second one happened. And even that didn’t last long.

“I’m going to find out what did this,” Cal had said in the social service’s building, when they had finally let Dick see him after the police station took him away. “I’ll figure this out, and I’ll come and get you, no matter where you are, no matter what anyone says.”

Dick believed him. Of course he did, unchi Cal never broke a promise. But that didn’t mean Dick couldn’t help.

Dick remembered that bad guy who had threatened his parents. He could remember the guy’s face. He could find him, and call unchi Cal, and then… Dick clenched his fists.

He could do this. Gotham wasn’t that big, right?  
…

**Author's Note:**

> A/N:  
> Romani translations  
> Unchi - uncle  
> Mic - little  
> Tata- dad
> 
> Note:  
> I may have put myself onto some watch lists looking how trapeze ropes were made, and how to dissolve them. Robin is baby, someone please protect him.


End file.
